The Camel Merchant of Philadelphia

by Sarbpreet Singh

  The mighty Mughal Empire was by now past its peak. Rebellions were breaking out everywhere. Just two years earlier, the Marathas, under the leadership of Peshwa Baji Rao had broken off chunks of the Mughal Empire and even had the temerity to mount attacks on the capital itself.

  Now, even more tumultuous events were about to unfold.

  The storm clouds had been gathering in faraway Persia and Khorasan (modern-day Afghanistan) for several years. The mighty kingdom of Persia had been ruled by the Safavid Dynasty since 1502, but the glory days of emperors like Abbas the Great were over and the Safavids, like the Mughals, were also in a period of decline. In 1736, the ambitious son of a humble herdsman, a great admirer of the mighty Mongol conquerors Genghis Khan and Timur, convened a Qoroltai or tribal council in what is today modern-day Azerbaijan.

  A brave warrior and natural leader, he had built around himself a band of freebooters whose ranks were swelling by the day, as more and more adventurers flocked to his banner, drawn by his military successes in Khorasan, on the outer reaches of the Persian Empire. He entered the service of Shah Tahmasp of Persia, and rose to command his armies, eventually marrying the Shah’s sister and becoming the Governor of Khorasan. The herdsman’s son won great victories against the Ottaman Empire, besieging Baghdad and capturing large tracts of Armenia and Georgia. When his military successes aroused Shah Tahmasp’s jealousy, the herdsman’s son forced him to abdicate and declared himself regent as the Shah’s son was still a baby.

  The Qoroltai was well-attended and all the tribes that exercised power in the crumbling Persian Empire were represented. On March 8, 1736, the herdsman’s son was crowned the new Shah of Persia.

  His name was Nadir Shah.

  While the opulent palaces of Muhammad Shah Rangila echoed with music and poetry, the new Shah of Persia went from strength to strength and turned his attention eastwards.

  Khorasan had always been a trouble spot in the Persian Empire. The hardy and warlike tribesmen of Khorasan had never recognised anyone’s authority. The Ghilzai tribe was in open rebellion in the region around Kandahar, a situation that the new Shah was unwilling to tolerate. Nadir Shah reached out to Muhammad Shah Rangila, as the Persian and Mughal courts had historical alliances and asked him to close the frontiers around Kabul and the Indus Valley so that the rebels may not flee or seek refuge. The Mughal Emperor received the Persian envoys with great courtesy and promised assistance but did absolutely nothing for a year, largely because his regional governors and generals sympathised with the Afghans, rather than the Persians.

  Nadir Shah was furious and decided to march upon Delhi.

  In May of 1738, he attacked northern Afghanistan, capturing Ghazni, Kabul, Jalalabad and Peshawar in quick succession. In January 1739, he captured Lahore, defeating the forces of the Mughal Governor Zakariya Khan.

  In February 1739, Nadir Shah captured Sirhind and moved towards Delhi, completely routing a Mughal force of over a hundred thousand at Karnal, that outnumbered the invaders two to one. Muhammad Shah Rangila surrendered to Nadir Shah thirteen days after the Battle of Karnal and handed over the keys of Delhi to him.

  John Clark Marshman, in his work on Indian history published in 1836, offers this account:

  Nadir Shah entered Delhi in March, 1739, accompanied by Mohammad Shah Rangile, and took up residence in the royal palace. False rumours of his death encouraged the citizens of Delhi to revolt against the invaders, who crushed the rebellion, killing more than a thousand. The next morning, when Nadir mounted his horse and personally sought to restore order, the rebellious citizens of Delhi attacked him with rocks and missiles thrown from windows, killing one of his favourite officers, who rode at his sight. Already angered by the corpses of his soldiers he had seen all over the city, Nadir Shah on being attacked ordered his troops to massacre the residents of the city at will. More than eight thousand were killed by his forces in a frenzy of violence. The massacre stopped when Mohammad Shah Rangile begged for mercy. Nadir Shah’s discipline was so absolute that the minute he gave the order, every soldier sheathed his sword and the carnage stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  Nadir Shah remained in Delhi for three months. Mohammad Shah Rangile was forced to hand over the keys of his royal treasury, and lost the fabulous Peacock Throne, the pride of the Mughal court, to the Persian Emperor. Among a trove of other fabulous jewels, Nadir Shah took the Koh-i-Noor, or the Mountain of Light, reputed to be the largest diamond in the world and the Darya-ye Noor or the Sea of Light, another fabulous diamond. The Persian troops left Delhi at the beginning of May 1739, taking with them thousands of elephants, horses and camels, loaded with the booty they had collected. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nadir Shah suspended taxes in Persia for a period of three years following his return!12

  On their return to Persia, as they passed through Punjab, the Shah’s forces had encountered bands of Sikhs around the Chenab river, who had offered stiff resistance and impressed the Shah with their valour. It is said that the following exchange took place between Nadir Shah and the defeated Zakariya Khan about the Sikhs:

  Nadir Shah: Who are these mischief-makers?

  Zakariya Khan: They are a group of fakirs who visit their Guru’s tank (Amritsar) twice a year and, bathing in it, disappear.

  Nadir Shah: Where do they live?

  Zakariya Khan: Their houses are their saddle.

  Nadir Shah: Take care; the day is not distant when these rebels will take possession of the country.

  The story of this exchange is probably apocryphal.13

  However, this was the first encounter between the Sikhs and the Persian forces, which included a large complement of the Afghans of Khorasan.

  Many more were to follow.

  In the years when Nadir Shah was consolidating his power and readying himself to claim the throne of Persia, Khorasan was in ferment. The rough, barren land was a sea of shifting alliances between rival tribes forever jockeying for power and influence. In 1722, a son was born to Muhammed Zaman Khan Abdali, the governor of Herat, and his wife Zarghuna Alakozai. His family came from the Sadozai section of the Popalzai clan of the Abdalis. Ahmad Shah’s mother was from the Alakozai clan of the Abdalis. In 1729, after Nadir Shah invaded Khorasan, the young Ahmad Shah, whose father had perished in battle shortly after his birth, fled south with his family to Kandahar and took refuge with the Ghilzais. He and his brother, Zulfikar, viewed as future rivals, were imprisoned by Hussain Hotaki, the Ghilzai ruler of Kandahar. In 1731, Nadir Shah began enlisting the Abdali tribesmen from Herat into his army, recognising their warlike nature and renown for bravery. Ahmad Shah and his brother were freed by Nadir Shah when he captured Kandahar on his way to Delhi in 1738 and were recruited into his service. The Ghilzais were expelled from Kandahar and the Abdalis began to settle in the city.

  According to British historian Olaf Caroe, chronicler of Pathan history, Ahmad Shah proved himself in Nadir Shah’s service and was promoted from personal attendant to Nadir Shah to commander of a four-thousand-strong unit of the Abdali cavalry. His men displayed great valour and literally saved Nadir Shah’s skin, when he was attacked by Afridi tribesmen in the Khyber Pass, eager to relieve him of his plunder on his way back to Persia from Delhi.14

  Nadir Shah doted on his Afghan Corps to such an extent that it caused great jealousy among his Persian courtiers, particularly among the Qizilbash, and Olaf Caroe is of the opinion that it contributed to Nadir Shah’s assassination by Mohammed Kuli Khan Qajar in 1747. He went on to capture the throne of Persia. Nadir Shah had gotten wind of a plot against him by his Persian guards and he ordered his Afghan Corps to arrest them pre-emptively. The orders were overheard by a spy who informed Mohammad Kuli Khan and his fellow conspirator Salih Khan, the steward of Nadir Shah’s household.

  In Caroe’s telling, Nadir Shah was murdered in his tent in 1747 some years after his return from India. At this time the Abdali contingent of the Afghan Corps was commanded by Ahmad Khan. Hearing a great deal of noise,
Ahmad and his men rushed to protect their king. Their way was barred by Qizilbash forces who greatly outnumbered the Afghans. By the time Ahmad Shah entered the royal tent, Nadir Shah had been killed. Recognising the fragility of his situation, he fled to Kandahar along with his followers.15

  Ahmad Shah might have been devastated by the murder of his mentor and king but his death created a huge opportunity for the young chief. Nadir Shah had extended Persian rule far to the east, capturing Kandahar, Kabul, Multan, Derajat and Peshawar, which had all been Mughal provinces. During his flight to Kandahar, Ahmad Shah was able to capture a Persian convoy carrying much of the treasure that Nadir Shah had looted during the Delhi campaign, including the fabulous Kohinoor diamond. Upon arriving in Kandahar, Ahmad Khan deposed the ruler, Nur Muhammad Alizai and took control of the province.

  In October of 1747, the chiefs of the dominant Abdali and Ghilzai tribes met near Kandahar for a Loya Jirga or tribal council to choose a leader. The proceedings of the council are colourfully described by Brigadier General Sir Percy Sykes in his work on Afghan history.16 According to his account, the chiefs of the Abdali and Ghilzai tribes assembled at the tomb of Shaykh Seurk, near Kandahar, to decide how Khorasan was to be governed. Rival chiefs tried to assert their claims to be the new Shah, but Ahmad Khan Abdali, who was also present, sat silently. Suddenly, the guardian of the tomb, a highly respected Sufi dervish rose to pour scorn on the arguing chiefs. He suggested that there was none worthier than Ahmad Khan and that Allah himself had ordained that he should be their ruler! Such was the influence of the holy man that Haji Jamal Khan, perhaps the most influential chief present at the meeting, immediately withdrew his claims in favour of Ahmad Khan. The dervish then poured some wheat on Ahmad Khan’s head and crowned him with a wreath of straw. Thus at the age of twenty-three, Ahmad Khan became Ahmad Shah Abdali, the king of the newly independent Afghans.

  Olaf Caroe, in his book The Pathans, offers a no less colourful but slightly more cynical version. According to him, the powerful chiefs decided that the callow youth, who came from the Sadozai clan, a weak branch of the Popalzai clan, would be fairly pliable and could be easily deposed. He quotes the account contained in the autobiography of Amir Abdurrahman, who ruled Afghanistan decades after these events:

  Agreeing on this, all took pieces of grass in their mouths as a token that they were his cattle and beasts of burden and throwing pieces of cloth round their necks as a sign of willingness to be lead, submitted to his rule and gave him powers of life and death.17

  Haji Jamal Khan, whose decision to withdraw from the race was an important factor in Ahmad Shah’s ascension, belonged to the powerful Barakzai clan and he became the new ruler’s Wazir or Prime Minister, with the understanding that the position would be hereditary and would lay the foundation of a strong alliance between the Sadozais and the Barakzais.

  The new ruler of Afganistan took the title ‘Dur-i-Durran’ or ‘Pearl of Pearls’ and the Abdalis were from then on known as the Durranis.

  Ahmad Shah Durrani ruled Afghanistan for twenty-six years, from 1747 to 1773. During his reign, he crossed the Indus eight times to attack and plunder Punjab, his forays taking him all the way to Delhi. His first two expeditions were conducted between 1748 and 1749. The primary purpose of these was to consolidate his hold over Peshawar and other territories east of the Indus in his own name. He sacked Lahore and Sind in these expeditions, forcing the weak Mughal Emperor, Ahmad Shah Bahadur, the son of Mohammad Shah Rangila, to accept his control over them.

  Ahmad Shah Durrani’s third invasion of Punjab took place in 1751. He defeated and then pardoned the governor of Lahore, Muin-ul-Mulk, who is notorious in Sikh history for his brutal repression and is better known as Mir Mannu. The Mughal Emperor sued for peace and formally ceded Punjab and Multan to Ahmad Shah Durrani and Muin-ul-Mulk governed it in his name.

  The death of Muin-ul-Mulk brought the appointment of Adina Beg, whose loyalties lay with the Mughals, as governor of Lahore. Ahmad Shah Durrani attacked Punjab a fourth time in 1756 and took control of Lahore as well as Delhi, where he deposed Alamgir II, the then Mughal Emperor and got his son Taimur Mirza, married to the Emperor’s daughter, extracting the provinces of Punjab and Sind as dowry. In the summer of 1757, he set out to return home, laden with plunder worth twelve million rupees.

  Contemporary accounts state that Durrani’s own booty was loaded on twenty-eight thousand elephants, camels, mules and bullocks, followed by eighty thousand soldiers on horse and foot, who carried their own spoils. Taimur was in the vanguard, followed closely by his father.

  As a young commander of the Afghan Corps in Nadir Shah’s army, Durrani had already encountered the Sikhs when they had attacked the Persian army returning from Delhi, laden with loot, decades earlier. Now, Durrani’s rich, slow-moving caravan was too juicy a target. Bands of Sikh horsemen closed in and relieved Taimur of much of his booty. Ala Singh, of the Phulkian Misl (one of the Sikh confederacies) and the founder of the state of Patiala plundered the Afghans at Sanawar and Malerkotla. The Sikhs would employ their usual hit-and-run tactics, attacking swiftly on horseback and retreating before the Afghans could retaliate. In fury, Durrani attacked the city of Amritsar to exact revenge from the Sikhs, destroyed the Sri Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) and filled the pool around it with the entrails of slaughtered cows. Leaving Taimur in charge of Lahore with ten thousand troops, the angry Durrani set out homewards.

  His travails had not yet ended. As he proceeded westward, his flanks were harried and attacked repeatedly by more Sikh bands, commanded by a relatively unknown Sikh chief known as Charat Singh, of the Sukerchakia Misl.

  The word ‘Misl’ is of Persian origin and refers to a collection that exhibits similitude. The Sikhs were loosely confederated into twelve bands of warriors known as ‘Misls’. In some part they were a response to the tyranny of Zakriya Khan, the Mughal governor of Lahore, who had launched an all-out assault on the Sikhs. These Misls were all considered equal, but varied greatly in size, some comprising a few hundred warriors while others could field eight to ten thousand. Each Misl operated autonomously and there was great mobility among them in that a Sikh was free to join any Misl. The personal charisma and leadership qualities of the heads of the Misls played a great part in their ability to succeed and grow. Each Misl had a loose geographic boundary within which it operated, and internecine conflicts between Misls were not uncommon, motivated by the desire to expand. Also, there were often disagreements about the sharing of the spoils of war. But remarkably, the Misls would come together and unite whenever an external threat, such as the Afghans appeared at the borders of Punjab. Amongst the most powerful were the Bhangi and the Kanhayya Misls. The Sukerchakia Misl was among the smallest and controlled a small territory around the town of Gujranwala.

  This was the first meeting between the Sadozais and the Sukerchakias. It was by no means going to be the last.

  Tensions between the Sikhs and the Afghans continued to simmer. The desecration of the Sri Harmandir Sahib roused the Sikhs, and Baba Deep Singh of the Shaheed Misl decided to rally a force and rebuild the shrine. Taimur dispatched a large force under the command of his general Jahan Khan to thwart Baba Deep Singh’s designs. A pitched battle ensued, in which Baba Deep Singh died and the Harmandir Sahib was desecrated again. The Sikhs now rallied under the banner of Jassa Singh, the leader of the Ahluwalia Misl, who formed an alliance with Adina Beg and routed the Afghans at a village called Mahilpur. Taimur responded with a bigger force, which was also routed, and marauding bands of Sikhs were emboldened to attack and plunder the outskirts of Lahore.

  Adina Beg was no lasting ally of the Sikhs however, and his machinations set into motion events that were to have a far-reaching impact on the history of Punjab. By then the Marathas, a power from central India, had become the virtual masters of Delhi. Adina Beg invited them to invade Punjab in 1758, and convinced the Sikh Sardars to form an alliance with them. The Afghan army fled Lahore and a triumphant Raghunath Rao, th
e Maratha general, entered the city accompanied by the Sikh Sardars. The Marathas extracted rich tribute from Lahore and returned to Delhi, leaving the city in the control of the Sikhs after Adina Beg passed away later in 1758.

  The Marathas entered Punjab again in 1759, and when Jahan Khan and his Afghan forces crossed the Indus, defeated him again with the help of the Sikh sardars. The victory was a pyrrhic one. The growing strength of the Marathas and the Sikhs, and the recent reverses suffered by Taimur and Jahan Khan, had got Ahmad Shah Durrani’s attention.

  Retribution was not long in coming.

  Ahmad Shah Durrani now declared a jihad (Islamic holy war) against the Marathas, and warriors from various Pashtun tribes, as well as other tribes such as the Baloch, Tajiks and Muslims from South Asia answered his call. By 1759, Durrani and his army, which numbered sixty thousand, had crossed the Indus for the fifth time and reached Lahore. The Sikhs skirmished with him and wounded their old enemy, General Jahan Khan, but eventually gave way and let him proceed towards Delhi.

  A game of cat and mouse between the Marathas and Durrani began. Durrani received intelligence about a large Maratha army on its way from the south and decided to wait at Aligarh. The Sikhs, under the leadership of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia took advantage of the stalemate and occupied the suburbs of Delhi, withdrawing after the Marathas paid them thirty thousand rupees.

  The stalemate continued until 14 January 1761, when Durrani clashed with the Marathas on the famous battleground of Panipat, where long ago, the foundation of the Mughal Empire had been laid by Babar.